The Victorian Woman Question in Contemporary Feminist Fiction

JEANNETTE KING is Director of Women's Studies at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Her previous publications include Tragedy in the Victorian Novel; Doris Lessing and Women and the Word: Contemporary Women Novelists and the Bible.

The Victorian Woman Question in Contemporary Feminist Fiction explores the representation of Victorian womanhood in the work of some of today's most important British and North American novelists including A.S.The Victorian Woman Question in Contemporary Feminist Fiction explores the representation of Victorian womanhood in the work of some of today's most important British and North American novelists including A.S. Byatt, Sarah Waters, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter and Toni Morrison. By analysing these novels in the context of the scientific, religious and literary discourses that shaped Victorian ideas about gender, it contributes to an important inter-disciplinary debate. For while showing the power of these discourses to shape women's roles, the novels also suggest how individual women might challenge that power through their own lives.